What patience it would take
by Stossle
Summary: "But did you know?" I ask and it's suddenly very important. I know he's done questionable things, I know he's not... right.  But with that gun in his hand, did he know it wasn't forever? - Following Owen and Ianto in the time between season one and two.
1. Day One

**What patience it would take to mend that shattered mind**

_An idea taken from a line in my story "Why we did it". I also don't think the relationship between Owen and Ianto was fully explained. Set during after End of Days between Season One and Two. This story follows Owen and Ianto during this time from Ianto's perspective._

_**Disclaimer:**__ I don't own Torchwood or any of its characters. Just throw them into a room together sometimes to see what they do._

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><p><strong>Day One<strong>

"Ianto wait."

I'm not waiting, not anymore. I'm out of here, out of the Hub, through the tourist office and out of their sorry lives. There's no one left to stop me, no one left to wipe my mind if I go, no threat of familial retribution.

I walk swiftly across the Plass, head down, my coat wrapped tightly around my body against the winter chill. I've put up with a lot of crap but I didn't expect that, and not like that, not after….

I also don't expect an arm to reach out from nowhere and pull me from my stride. "Wha?" But I should have known, the bloody invisible lift. It takes a moment for their face to resolve through the perception filter, but it has to be Gwen. It's not.

"Ianto, mate, stop." He's face is hazy, but I think he looks worried, like he cares.

"Don't Ianto mate me, let me go." I pull my arm roughly from his and keep walking.

He lets go but starts walking beside me. With my longer legs he has to jog a bit to match my stride. Despite myself I feel the corner of my mouth twitch. I slow a little and we fall into step.

After a few minutes Owen asks, "So where are we going?"

I look down at him, "_We_ aren't going anywhere, _I _am going wherever the hell I feel like."

"Pub?" he asks.

"No," I say. Owen's solution might be the pub, I'd prefer to walk.

He shrugs his shoulder and continues to walk beside me. I turn off down along Lloyd George Avenue, at this time of day the sound of traffic should stop him trying to make conversation.

After a bit I turn to him, "Why are you following me Owen?"

I stare at him, daring him to say the name that shatters inside me. He starts to open his mouth to reply but he must catch my look and closes it again. But after a bit he speaks, so faint I almost don't catch it over the roar of the traffic, "He might come back."

I slow my steps and look at Owen properly. His face is slightly crumpled and he looks small. I mean he is small, but he's always had that terrifying presence of a short man. And then it starts to sink in; he wasn't following me for me, it wasn't any consideration of my feelings. He wants _me_ to reassure _him_, he is looking to me to tell him everything is going to be okay.

Why should I? Why should he even care? He shot Jack; three bullets, I counted. I'm the one who… Black eyes look up into mine.

"He'll be back," I lie, "Just like Gwen said, when his Doctor fixes him."

"Pub?" Owen repeats and some of that shrunken look has gone.

"Pub," I agree and turn back towards the bay.

I've got no right to be angry, I betrayed Jack too.


	2. Day Two

**Day Two**

"Why should you be leader?"

"And why should you?"

"I've got more experience and I've been here longer."

"Then it should be Tosh, she's been here the longest."

"Tosh doesn't want to, and - no offence my darling – doesn't have the same field experience. I was second in command, it should be me."

"Is that why you shot the boss?"

"Is that why you screwed him?"

"I didn't."

"But you wanted to, fucking him with your eyes, thinking about him when you fuck Rhys, thinking about him when you fucked me."

It's been going on for hours, but it's no competition really. Right now Owen couldn't lead his way out of a paper bag.


	3. Day Fourteen

**Day Fourteen**

"Ianto, where's that sun lamp? I need it for the greenhouse."

I don't look up from my work, "On order."

"When's it coming?" His voice is petulant but I'm not dealing with that today.

"When the supplier delivers it."

"And when will that be?"

"I don't know Owen." Not like I don't have enough to do. I'm just trying to fill in for all the stuff Jack did behind the scenes, do my own job and take up the slack on Gwen's so she can play leader. No wonder Jack never slept.

"Well find out then," Owen says with a verbal foot stomp.

"No." I'm still not looking at him but I can feel his shocked stare, so used to my acquiescence.

It takes him a moment to respond, and when he does his voice is lush with anger, "You're getting a bit fuckin' uppity, bit big for your bloody boots. Do your sodding job." He's moments away from his sleeping with the boss rant, but I'm not biting. He'd enjoy it too much.

"I am doing my job, which surprisingly enough doesn't involve tracking down garden supplies for you. If you want to find out where your sun lamp is, ring the supplier yourself." My voice is even, tone calm and I still don't look up.

"Too good for garden supplies now are you?"

"Too busy." I continue typing, although it's hard to concentrate with a laser beam glare aimed at my back.

So here's me, calm and contained when Owen says the one thing that makes me turn and stare, "So, what's their sodding number then?"


	4. Day Seventeen

**Day Seventeen**

The alien attacks me from behind, the force expelling the breath from my lungs and knocking me to the ground. I twist as fast as I can, but only quickly enough to see death rushing towards me.

Again.

Body feels pressure, pushed downward and trapped. Eyes see teeth and tentacles and slime. Ears hear groans and grunts that shouldn't be heard on this planet. Nostrils fill with a rancid seaweed stench. I yell and wrench my neck away from dripping teeth. But it's no good, Jack is gone, there will be no rescue. Another sensation fills me as time slows to a halt. That eerie familiar calm, that knowing.

This is it.

That was the life of Ianto Jones.

Teeth pierce the skin of my neck.

A shot rings through the silence of the end of my life and time picks up pace as two hundred pounds of dead alien goo collapses over my still living corpse. A hand reaches through the mess and grasps mine pulling me to my feet.

The Glock makes a different sound from the Webley, fuller, deeper. The Webley, sharper, stronger. Never knew I'd be able to distinguish the sounds of different guns.

"You alright?" Cool fingers reach up to touch my neck. "Ianto, mate, are you alright?"

"Yes." My voice speaks but I'm not sure if it tells the truth. His fingers touch the spot where the teeth have pierced and I wince.

"I need to wash it out and it might need a stitch, but I think you'll be ok."

I expect a quip about my carelessness, but he just grabs my gun from the slime and hands it to me.

"At least this one doesn't need much clean up," he says. I look at the dark green gelatinous mess that was my attacker. And then a truly strange thing happens. Owen Harper reaches over a garden fence and grabs a hose. Death washes down the drain while Ianto Jones looks on.

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><p>Once I'm cleaned up - three stiches and a new suit - I pour two scotches from Jack's supply. It's been a habit for so long it seems strange not to do it, even if Jack isn't here. I sit on Jack's desk and Owen on his spare chair. Not on Jack's seat, not yet.<p>

Owen looks at the brown liquid before taking a sip. I almost regret pouring it, I'm not sure what we're supposed to talk about, sitting here. I don't think Owen knows either. The silence is not comfortable.

There were two shots after the first one. Two shots when he was already dead. It was the first thing I did when we brought Jack's body back to the hub after the end of days - cleaned the blood off the hub floor. I can get blood out of any surface.

"Did you know he couldn't die?" I ask when I pour the second glass of scotch. I didn't mean to ask but the alcohol has loosened my tongue.

The old Owen would have hit back with a sarcastic comment, or an outright attack. This Owen I'm not so sure, all the fight is gone.

I'm surprised when he looks up at me, looks me directly in the eyes, "I suspected something," he says. His voice gruff and halting but his gaze is steady. "There's been times, lots of times, when he should have died, should have at least been hurt... With the cyber... I mean your girlfriend... With Lisa. You were out, but she electrocuted him Ianto. She did it twice. He should have died. And there were injuries - weevil bites… he just bounced back. Never even needed a stitch."

"But did you know?" I ask and it's suddenly very important. Is the man who saved my life today a murderer? I know he's done questionable things, I know he's not... right. But with that gun in his hand, did he know it wasn't forever?

And now he doesn't look at me, will not look at me and I know even before he says, "No, not for sure." His hands start to shake; I can see the liquid in the glass trembling. "He forgave me," Owen says and he looks at me again, eyes black, "He forgave me."

He forgave me too - doesn't make it right.

"I guess you got lucky," I say. I guess we all did.


	5. Day Nineteen

**Day Nineteen**

I can't leave the hub today. Feet wont take me, I've tried. And still I keep packing and unpacking my backpack, checking and rechecking I've got everything. Charge my phone, check the monitors, load the gun. But still there's an invisible wall somewhere between circular door and the lift.

There's monsters out there.


	6. Day Thirty Five

**Day Thirty-Five**

"Why are you always sending me out with Owen?"

Gwen looks up at me. She's sitting at Jack's desk; I guess it establishes her power. I guess I don't care; it's just a desk.

"It's good experience for you, he's a great field agent."

"That's not the reason."

Gwen purses her lips and her eyes narrow slightly. I clench my clammy fists and for the thousandth time wonder why she intimidates me so much. She takes a while answering, looking up at me, and I'm wishing I'd sat down when I came in so I don't feel like some silly school boy visiting the headmistresses office. "Because you're a man."

That's not the answer I expected.

"He needs that," she says, "Doesn't really trust women and right now I want him as stable as possible."

I've read the files, I know about his mother. I've known about the endless series of one-night stands. I've seen him with Gwen. I saw how he was with Jack. But I never connected it to 'Doesn't trust women'. That's why she's sitting behind this desk and I'm still fetching the coffee.

"Tosh?" I ask.

Gwen glances across to Tosh, head down, tinkering with some new alien artefact, masculine and feminine and from Owen's perspective, safe. "That's different," she looks back at me, "But now's not a good time. I've got to know we can trust him, and we don't need the disruption of a romance, particularly if I decide he needs to go."

I think my mouth must be hanging open a bit; I'd always seen Gwen as an idealist, but here she is manipulating our relationships like a madam in a brothel. And perhaps I do know why Gwen intimidates me, she's a hard-core fighter like Jack, like him she sees things as they are. But she's something more, because she sees further, she sees right inside us.

"Ianto, he's not stable, but he needs us and we need him. And right now the one he needs is you."

"But I don't need him. He…"

"He did, but Jack forgave him, I think we should follow Jack's lead. Please try Ianto, you've got the patience. I know it's hard, I know you're hurting too, but you're the only one."

I bow my head, but manage to mumble, "Okay." I guess from here on in it's just me and the prodigal son.


	7. Day Forty One

**Day Forty-One**

When I get back to hub it's dark. I mean the hub is always dark, but there are more lights turned off than normal. And it feels empty.

It never used to feel that way, it used to feel alive and wonderful, full of energy. But it was never empty before; because even when he wasn't here, I could still feel his presence. Now it's just dank and dark; the only noises the drip of water and the scurry of rats. And something else, hollow and stuttering – someone is crying.

I track the source to our new greenhouse. And there, behind some alien plant is Owen, on the ground, sniffling and smaller than I've ever seen him. He looks up and notices me.

"Fuck Ianto." He jumps up and he's wiping his eyes with the back of his sleeve and the smallness is gone.

"Sorry," I say and look down, because what else can you say. It would have been better if I'd caught him wanking; you don't, not in Wales at least, watch another man cry. Them's the rules.

My embarrassment must show because he punches me in the arm and says, "It's just tears Ianto."

I remember what Gwen said, so I look him in the eye and say the thing that we've been saying to each other for weeks, "He forgave us, he'll be back."

"I know he forgave us, I was there, but do you know the problem?" Black tear-stained eyes look at me.

"No," I say.

"I can't forgive myself."

I surprise myself when I reach out and give his hand a quick squeeze. I know a little something about that.


	8. Day Seventy Two

**Day Seventy-Two**

"Why did you do it?" I ask, because the question won't stay stoppered in my mouth any longer. I ask but receive no answer. As usual for a Saturday morning Owen is passed out on the couch. Doesn't do his hangovers at home anymore, brings them here for me to see. Because he knows I'll be here, slept here in Jack's little bunker so often it doesn't smell of Jack anymore, just me.

"Why did you do it?" I ask again and receive a soft snore in answer. But I think I know.

Torchwood is all Owen and I have. Gwen has Rhys, Tosh has her gadgets, but for Owen and me this is it.

And Jack took that away from him. Left him with only his anger.

But something happened in that moment, as bullets escaped from his gun. It stripped him of everything. It stripped me of everything.

And when you've got nothing you're washed clean and can start again.

I want Jack back, more than anything. But I think, I hope, that when he comes back we'll be more than what he left. I'll be more than the silent butler. He'll be more than the angry doctor.

Perhaps Jack wasn't the only one who came back to life that day. Me and Owen, we're just taking a little longer.

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><p><em>The End<em>

_Please review, have I got the relationship between the two right?_


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